The only difference between you today and you in 5 years’ time will be the people you meet, the courses you attend and the books you read. So says Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones. For over 50 years, Charlie "T" Jones had a simple, yet powerful mission: To help people improve their lives through reading. Another powerful quote of his was ‘Leaders are readers’
Simple yet powerful. Through reading – or in today’s world, listening (podcasts) and networking (Social Media and being part of like-minded groups) – that is how we learn and grow. This continual growth and learning is what Indicator Programmes and Indicator events was born out of - creating opportunities for our community to come together regularly to learn and grow.
It is also a big part of my commitment to my own growth and development to seek out the best authors and books on a wide range of subject matter, and thanks to podcasts, this is getting easier and becoming more integrated into my day. Recently myself and the team here have been focused on habits, inspired by Atomic Habits by James Clear (fantastic newsletter to subscribe to by the way) and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. The habits we should keep, stop and start, both from a personal perspective and from a business perspective with our clients.
I highly recommend reading these books, but I wanted to touch on the initial learning from them which was in recognising that success comes from creating and embedding habits. James Clear highlighted that successful people are created not by massive shifts or changes but creating small habits and sticking to them. You will often hear me say that one of the keys to being successful in sales is the ability to develop a good ‘cadence’ around a proven sales system. Basically then, the ability to establish a good habit around repeating something that you know works. As salespeople, we are all creatures of habit which makes the skill of developing habits that support that ‘cadence’ of sales success only more important.
Each year I get to observe literally hundreds of salespeople across a wide range of selling situations and something I have noticed in what is easy to do, is also easy not to do. The habit of entering info into your CRM, of researching your prospect before a visit, of reflection after each meeting and the habit of picking up a phone. All of these are small habits but together they can lead to considerable success.
In Tiny Habits BJ Fogg states that Behaviour = Motivation/Ability/Prompt, and it is these 3 things converging at the same time that results in behaviour.
If we think of that in a sales context:
- Motivation
This is your desire to do the behaviour, from understanding the value that behaviour will result in, knowing that if you do the small things well then the good things will come
- Ability
This is your capacity to do the behaviour and in a sales sense requires continual learning and making small improvements to get better all of the time
- Prompt
This is your cue to do the behaviour. A to-do list, a scheduled reminder or the cadence that prompts you as discussed above.
James Clear shares a story of one of his clients needing to lose weight and so he knew that he needed to create a habit with this individual. Instead of sending this individual to do a big workout first he had to get into a habit of going to the gym. For the first few weeks, all he asked his charge to do was to go to the gym for 5 minutes each time. Before too long this individual created a habit and went on to lose 150 pounds with that strategy.
A funny thing happens when you start going to the gym or doing good sales work regularly, your mind starts to tell you that you are a sportsperson or a great salesperson and when your mind starts to tell you these things then that is where the magic can happen.
This sense of habit gives us time to continually learn, tweak and develop our offerings for our ever-changing times.
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